Death and Disaster

Or, Pielke versus the world. To put my prejudices up front, my money would be on Pielke. Since I get to write this whilst watching a backup of my laptop (for for some odd reason) I'll have time to read the sources as I write this.

Background: global warming is happening, and will continue into the future. But how much of a problem is it now, and how much will it be in the future? These are difficult questions. Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it. They are wrong, of course.

Which brings us to the Global Humanitarian Forum and its Human Impact Report "The Anatomy of a Silent Crisis" (WTF? Silent crisis? GW is nothing if it isn't a noisy crisis, rarely out of the papers). It says of itself that it is specifically and exclusively focused on the adverse impacts of the climate change on human society across the world so there can't be much doubt what they set out to find; and climate change is already today a major constraint on all human efforts. I has been creeping up on the world for years, doing its deadly work in the dark by aggravating a host of other major problems affection society, such as malnutrition, malaria and poverty. This report aims at breaking the silent suffering of millions. Its findings indicate that the impacts of climate change are each year responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths with hundreds of millions of lives affected. Climate change is a serious threat to close to three quarters of the world population. Half a billion people are at extreme risk. Worst affected are the world´s poorest groups, who lack any responsibility for causing climate change. from the summary tells you what they did find. So far so boring; the only surprise is that they have the gall to bill this as the first report of its kind.

Oddly enough, RP Jr didn't like it and thought it was a "A Methodological Embarassment". Brian Schmidt thought this was just "Dog bites man, and Roger Pielke Jr. goes about things wrong ". Brian thinks that the bit RP is complaining about is only ~5% of deaths (and some other stuff too, which is less interesting). I'm sure other people are saying much the same as Brian, but I haven't bothered trawl to find out whom. RP Jr is happy to maintain and extend his critique.

Reading (OK, I admit it, skimming) the reports finds the first interesting bit An estimated 325 million people are seriously affected by climate change every year. This estimate is derived by attributing a 40 percent proportion of the increase in the number of weather-related disasters from 1980 to current to climate change and a 4 percent proportion of the total seriously affected by environmental degradation based on negative health outcomes. So criticising RP for focussing on disasters seems rather unfair - it is the first thing the report mentions. If they are only 5% of the deaths, then I think BS should be criticising the GHF for being misleading!

While I'm there, just below that is their figure 1 - showing in graphical form the relative effects of climate change and other stuff. The LH panel is somewhat meaningless, since the large red bar is "affected by cl ch" and who knows what "affected" means. But it does compare to the 24M affected by traffic accidents. The RH panel is more interesting, as at least we knw what death is, so the 315k dead of cl ch can be compared to the... oh hold on. Why haven't they put in the obvious comparison against deaths from traffic accidents? Wouldn't that be the obvious thing to do? Could it possibly be because Global Traffic Deaths Put at Million a Year. OK, that is only the NYT so who cares, how about we try the Transport Research Laboratory which says "estimated that in 1999 between 750,000 and 880,000 people died from road crashes and that the majority of these deaths occurred in developing and transitional nations (85 per cent). Almost half of all estimated deaths occurred in the Asia-Pacific region. This compares with a recent estimate by the World Health Organisation of over a million deaths in 1998". Gosh, that rather puts things into perspective.

By this point, I'd be pretty well ready to give up on the GHF, who whilst probably Nice People who you'd love to have as neighbours are clearly not up to the realities of the world. Notice how "silent crisis" would be so much more applicable to traffic deaths than GW deaths. But I'll stop harping on that; it is going to go nowhere.

So anyway, RP leads me to some bloke commenting on dotearth that The very first line of the Executive Summary of the health chapter (CH8 in WG2) reads "Climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths (very high confidence)." WGII isn't a patch on WGI, of course, but can't be completely dismissed. The quoter fails to quote the end of that para, which is At this early stage the effects are small but are projected to progressively increase in all countries and regions. [8.4.1]

So we inquire: what is the source of the very high confidence? What will section 8.4.1 say? It sez The World Health Organization conducted a regional and global comparative risk assessment to quantify the amount of premature morbidity and mortality due to a range of risk factors, including climate change, and to estimate the benefit of interventions to remove or reduce these risk factors. In the year 2000, climate change is estimated to have caused the loss of over 150,000 lives and 5,500,000 DALYs (0.3% of deaths and 0.4% of DALYs, respectively) (Campbell-Lendrum et al., 2003; Ezzati et al., 2004; McMichael, 2004) RP points me to a 2003 McMichael (also including C-L; so I'm going to hope that will do). This says that (forward-fitting, then extrapolating back to get the change from 1990 to 2000) that ClChDeaths in 2000 is 166k. IPCC say >150k, so I suppose that fits. But more interestingly, the results say They should be interpreted with caution as, in contrast to most other risk factors, they relied on modelled rather than directly observed outcomes... The models may also be useful for the secondary purpose of indicating the magnitude of health impacts that might already be caused by climate change, but which may not be detected by direct observation using current surveillance systems. That seems to me to be very much more cautious that the IPCC's very high confidence of impacts (except in the rather trivial sense that since the study finds a positive connection between T and death, then any increase in T will lead to some increase in death).

Oh dear, I think I'm rambling, But I've seen enough now. It is clear that these death estimates are ClCh only, and not very reliable, and ignore other factors (like people getting richer. McM notes that this is a problem; based on the models they use, Europe should have malaria, but of course it doesn't, because we got rid of it). The largest cause of ClChDeath in McM is malnutrition, and as I've said before I don't think this we're going to run out of food. So where do McM get their malnutrition deaths from? Well, first of all we have a puzzle: their models end up with an increase in malnutrition deaths from 1990 to 2000. But per capita food consumption has been going up, not down. The answer to this puzzle probably lies in Climate change may affect this through the balance of the (broadly negative) effects of changes in temperature and precipitation, and (broadly positive) effects of higher CO2 levels on yields of major food crops - in other words, they are going to ignore the (large) effects of technological progress (explicitly: no major changes in the political or economic context of world food trade or in food production technology).

So I think it is safe to say that while the McI study may be an interesting abstract modelling study, it has very little relevance to the pattern of deaths in the real world. Which in turn means the IPCC conclusions are dubious, as is the GHF report.

Conclusion: RP Jr is right.

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The GHF study can be flawed, and RP Jr could have done a lousy critique. Those two concepts are non-exclusive.

His critique that got into the NY Times was based on less than 5% of the deaths, something that he didn't disclose. Go ahead and criticize the GHF study for not listing the factors in their order of importance, but I don't see that as the biggest problem in the world.

In just the last day or two, after pronouncing judgment in the NY Times based on 5% of the deaths, he also criticized the malnutrition study, but that wasn't something he used earlier.

What RP should've done is said "I'm only criticizing 5% of the study and have nothing to say about the rest," or given the reasons why he thinks the entire study is flawed.

Is the study any good? I don't know, but your throway comments here are already a much fairer critique than the misleading stuff Roger sent to the Times.

[A couple of responses. First of all, and as I said, the GHF itself lists disasters first, and it doesn't immeadiately give the %'s to each. If I were someone reading that report, who knew quite a bit about the disaster related stuff and not much about the disease bit, I'd quite happily stop at that point and analyse the disaster stuff and comment based on that. RP should probably have checked a bit more closely, but it isn't a major failing, especially because... Secondly, the rest of the report looks pretty damm dodgy too. Roger is right: there is a whole gigantic edifice of reports being built on very shaky foundations and this will not do a service to anyone. And third, your posts attacking Roger look very much like a defence of the GHF report, which I now think is indefensible -W]

you can't see the difference between traffic related deaths and the once related to global warming?

[No no. I'm saying that they start off comparing traffic injuries to "cl ch affected", and they do this because the nebulous concept of "affected" allows them to make the cl ch bar bigger. But then the obvious (honest) comparison would be cl ch deaths to traffic deaths. They don't make that comparison, and I believe that the reason (which does them no credit) is because traffic deaths are larger than cl ch deaths -W]

To me it just is an awful comparison... You have lots of freedoms when it comes to traffic both on national and individual levels... but the climate change will be forced on you.

Numbers can be interesting but IMHO this really is two different things.

[Ah, well whether it is a meaningful comparison is a quite different question. I am inclined to think it is valuable. "boring" deaths like traffic accidents gather far less attention than climate change. OTOH they do gather lots of money in terms of road work, at least in the developed world. One thing I find rather lacking in the GHF report is a lack of attempt at balance - costs and benefits, 300k deaths against all the rest -W]

You have chosen traffic deaths as a figure to be used in comparison with AGW deaths. Why not use deaths from the War on Terrorism. That has caused 4,000 in NY, 4,000 US militaty deaths and over 40,000 civilian deaths in IRAQ. Even in total far fewer than GHF estimate die from climate change each year.

[No, *I'm* not chosing it; they are. If you chose to do a cost-benefit analysis of the WoT you would discover it to be a disaster: few deaths prevented, many caused, stupendous cost -W]

But what you are really missing is that if we continue to do nothing the effects of AGW can only get worse, and that means eventually they will be catastrophic! The question is will we spot that catastrophe ahead before it is too late to stop it.

[can only get worse, and that means eventually they will be catastrophic - that is illogical, captain. Traffic deaths will only get worse if you project current trends, but they will not become catastrophic. You are falling for the "it is obviously going to be a disaster" mentality that I was criticising right at the start: there is no a priori proof of disaster: it requires evidence and study that has not yet been done -W]

You wrote:

Background: global warming is happening, and will continue into the future. But how much of a problem is it now, and how much will it be in the future? These are difficult questions. Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it. They are wrong, of course.

As a "Greenpeace type" I do not automatically believe that All Will be Ill. Like you, I originally thought that catastrophe was unlikely, but after careful consideration I realised that it is not impossible. Now, since people naturally do not face up to impending cataclysims, as I explained above, it seems inevitable. In other words I believe rationally that All Wiil be Ill.

[after careful consideration I realised that it is not impossible - I still don't understand you. It doesn't require careful consideration to realise that catastrophe is possible. I believe it, for example. But I don't believe that ignoring the problem makes catastrophe inevitable -W]

Where is you reasonng to show that "They are wrong, of course." Surely that is just blind optimism?

[I don't think you've understood what I'm saying. I'm saying that it is not a priori obvious that cl ch will be a disaster -W]

By Alastair McDonald (not verified) on 05 Jun 2009 #permalink

Good stuff. I also wondered about traffic casualties for comparison.

Have you seen this from Climate Resistance:

"The statistic of 150,000 climate change deaths is from the WHOâs The World Health Report 2002, page 72 of which says:

Climate change was estimated to be responsible in 2000 for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea, 6% of malaria in some middle income countries and 7% of dengue fever in some industrialized countries. In total, the attributable mortality was 154 000 (0.3%) deaths and the attributable burden was 5.5 million (0.4%) DALYs. About 46% this burden occurred in SEAR-D, 23% in AFR-E and a further 14% in EMR-D."

From:
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2009/06/the-age-of-the-age-of-stupid…

which goes on:

"The book estimated climate change was to blame for 2.4 percent of cases of diarrhoea because, Campbell-Lendrum said, the heat would exacerbate bacterial contamination of food.

Climate change was also behind two percent of all cases of malaria, because increased rainfall created new breeding grounds for mosquitoes which carry the disease, he said."

By Luke Warmer (not verified) on 05 Jun 2009 #permalink

{I don't think you've understood what I'm saying. I'm saying that it is not a priori obvious that cl ch will be a disaster -W}

You are correct. I did not understand that when you wrote "They are wrong, of course" that you meant that "They are wrong to be so sure that they are right." I thought that you were saying that "They are wrong to believe a catastrophe will happen, because we all know that it won't."

[In full, I said Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it. They are wrong, of course. I thought it was obvious that I was referring to the need to study this. Apologies if that appeared ambiguous -W]

My mildest rebuke is that when you write remarks as you did, the normal person takes it as that you are contradicting the greenies and that there is nothing to worry about. So long as the scientific community (you are not alone with Dr Vicky Pope being a prime example) keep telling the public that their fears may be unfounded, then they will take no action. Scientists should be warning of the dangers! They are the only ones who know what they are.

[If the public refuse to act in the absence of certainty, then they are scientifically illiterate. oh, wait... -W]

At least Jim Hansen, James Lovelock, Sir David King, and Lord May have spoken out.

But Nassim Taleb in "The Black Swan" explained the ways in which you and I see things differently. You see the retreat of the Arctic sea ice as a linear process governed by a Gaussian probability, and it having a slow retreat over decades. I see it as a non-linear process driven by positive feedbacks such as the ice albedo effect. This will lead to its exponential disappearance within the next few years. No doubt when I win my bet that this year's min will be a record you will declare that I was just lucky :-(

[Sea ice is non-linear. I know that. And fair enough, you've put up some money for this year (but you know its probabalistic, due to variation. Winning makes it more likely that you are correct, but not certain. The reverse for losing -W]

When Nassim Taleb talks about the limits of statistics, he becomes outraged. "My outrage," he says, "is aimed at the scientist-charlatan putting society at risk using statistical methods.

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html

He has my sympathy. I too find it difficult to remain calm when it seems that all climate scientists insist on applying linear mathematics and statistics to a problem which Edward Lorenz showed 50 years ago was not just non-linear but also chaotic. They are not just putting our society at risk. They are endangering the whole of mankind!

[But we (they) don't. As it happens, large proportions of the non-linearity present in GCMs just happens to integrate out over long scales, so that the concept of climate sensitivity seems to make sense. This didn't have to be true, but it seems that it is, in the models at least. But don't think that they are linear, or that you are the first to have the brilliant idea of considering non-linearity -W]

Cheers, Alastair.

By Alastair McDonald (not verified) on 05 Jun 2009 #permalink

. I too find it difficult to remain calm when it seems that all climate scientists insist on applying linear mathematics and statistics to a problem which Edward Lorenz showed 50 years ago was not just non-linear but also chaotic.

Who knew climate models were linear all along? You should have spoken up sooner: think how much money we could have saved on supercomputers, just for starters. (sarcasm alert)

By Jonathan Baxter (not verified) on 05 Jun 2009 #permalink

Which in turn means the IPCC conclusions are dubious

But surely the IPCC isn't basing its statement on just McMichael. The problem with the "very high confidence" is that it lumps increased disease together with deaths, so it's fairly useless when you get to discussing it in depth.

Check table 8.1 for the list of new studies.

As a side note, in going over the list, I think I see a possible bias in the literature towards studying the bad effects of global warming rather than the possible benefits. (Or am I missing a section?) This might be in part because you don't need to study how to adapt to fewer cold related deaths.

> you don't need to study how to adapt to fewer
> cold related deaths.

Ah, but you do need to study what actually happens when climate warms.

You have to take into account that there are more cold-related deaths in areas with:

warmer climates, no insulation, cold wet weather rather than freezing dry weather, unreliable home heating, inadequate cold-weather clothes, and no general experience dealing with the cold.

Look up the death rates from south to north across Europe.
Or try some of these:
http://cel.isiknowledge.com/InboundService.do?product=CEL&action=search…

People who live in cold conditions build for them, dress for them, and take care of their old folks with cold in mind.

[And conversely, of course, for warm conditions. You are putting the case for the viability of adaption to change, I think? -W]

By Hank Roberts (not verified) on 05 Jun 2009 #permalink

If the computers are so super, how come they got the Arctic sea ice so wrong? (rhetorical question.)

Beside who would have listened to me? Obviously not you!

By Alastair McDonald (not verified) on 06 Jun 2009 #permalink

Background: global warming is happening, and will continue into the future. But how much of a problem is it now, and how much will it be in the future? These are difficult questions. Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it. They are wrong, of course.

"All Will Be Ill" is a fringe statement. Finding evidence that it is incorrect should be fairly easy, but not prove the "All Will Be Well" alternative fringe statement. The subject being politics rather than science, the debate will be between these fringe statements, rather than trying to find a most likely answer, with some realistic discussion of the possible range of answers.

Small amounts of climate change are likely to have both some positive impacts on human activities, as well as some negative impacts. Sure, there will be somewhat of a redistribution effect, with the winners being mostly rich and the losers being mostly poor. However, this answer isn't "All Will Be Ill", or "All Will Be Well". It is far more complex.

Larger amounts of climate change have at least the potential to be very harmful. PT, or the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost everything on the planet died, is one example, with one of the probable causes being a volcanic release of CO2 from volcanic activity triggering a release from methane clathrates. A less extreme and better documented example is the LPTM.

If one had a short enough term view, then the risks of larger amounts of climate change can be ignored. How long is short term? Perhaps a century, perhaps rather less, perhaps rather more. It takes time to accumulate CO2 in the atmosphere, time to warm the oceans, and to melt the ice. Humans are fairly good at dealing with threats in shorter time periods. Can we deal with a problem with a time scale longer than the average human life?

By Phil Hays (not verified) on 06 Jun 2009 #permalink

"Ah, but you do need to study what actually happens when climate warms.

You have to take into account that there are more cold-related deaths..."

I don't doubt any of what you say, but it seems to me in going very briefly through WGII chapter 8 that the literature is focused on the bad things (increased disease, drought, heat related deaths, etc.). But I'll admit that I haven't read the studies, so a paper on heat related deaths could also cover cold related deaths (wherever they occur).

BTW, that's not to say that the good things aren't discussed and covered, there are just more studies on the bad things.

PS--I don't have an ISI sub. available at the moment, so I don't know what you linked to.

" . . . who whilst probably Nice People who you'd love to have as neighbours are clearly not up to the realities of the world."

ah, I don't think it has ever been summed so eloquently. though my neighbors are such people.

Many organisations and people (the Greenpeace types) appear to automatically assume that All Will Be Ill, and there is no particular need to study this question or even think about it.

Perhaps in part because such people and organizations are interested not just in *human* but *ecological* responses(and arguably are more interested in the latter than the former). AFAIK, there's nothing to suggest that already-stressed ecosystems are likely to go in any direction other than wonk in response to climate change. Or am I wrong about that?

[Three answers, which amount to "I don't know": (1) how much work is there about the response of ecosystems to climate change, and does it indicate problems? (2) isn't one of the features of ecosystems their resilience to change (3) "already-stressed" may be the key point: if the problem is the 95% stress we have already imposed, why are we focussing all our attention on the 5% extra stress rather than the existing 95%? -W]

Well, wrt specifically how much work there is on cc and ecosystems, I don't know - but those studies I have heard of are not promising. I would assume that the IPCC Working Group II report (ymmv) into "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" is probably a pretty good indicator of the general direction of research findings to date, though - and it seems predominantly negative in its estimations of cc impacts on ecosystems.

The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g., flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification), and other global change drivers (e.g., landuse change, pollution, over-exploitation of resources).

and

For increases in global average temperature exceeding 1.5-2.5°C and in concomitant atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and function, speciesâ ecological interactions, and speciesâ geographical ranges, with predominantly negative consequences for biodiversity, and ecosystem goods and services e.g., water and food supply.

As to (2), yes to a degree... but ecosystems can also be readily screwed up, no? Hence extinctions? And as I understand it the concerns are that (a) changes are likely to happen too fast for ecosystems to adapt and (b) things like land use will make natural adaptation strategies (migration, for example) impossible. Which ties in to your (3), of course, but I suspect the suggestion that we raze cities and make farmland fallow in order to accommodate insect population migrations would receive even shorter shrift than the suggestion that we implement a carbon tax.

As to (3)... Well, (a) Greenpeace and their ilk have always focused on the other 95%, so that question is a bit moot in one sense; (b) some (many) of the other stressors are linked to cc anyway - many land-use issues, ocean acidification, pollution etc - so they are overlapping sets; (c) a lot of the existing stressors are kinda fait accompli (see razing cities), and (d) the above notwithstanding, you have of course got a point. I guess relieving other stressors to mitigate the impacts of inavoidable cc would count as mitigation...

Finally: you know all this.

Maybe they mean silent crisis in the same way that diabetes is known as the silent killer: it shows no symptoms for a very long time while things are going wrong in irreversible ways. Other crises are directly noisy, eg. tsunami, volcano or war; the amount of press isn't what they're talking about, I don't think.

OutEast. There is no evidence that ecosystems are being screwed up. I cannot remember the author, but one man in the IPCC figured that a sustained increase of 0.4C per decade would cause collapse of some fragile ecosystems. I'm glad that we are warming at a sixth of that rate. The current rate of warming is less than 1C per century, an unnoticable amount. The only possible source of ecosystem disruption is rainfall changes, which are dominated by local changes (ie: deforestation around Kilimonjaro led to a local drought and desertification). I find that the IPCC second working group's results are tarnished due to use of data with extremely high uncertainty.

Now, the comparison to car deaths is important because it puts things in perspective. 150,000 people is a lot, but that WHO report calculated 42 million deaths, and climate change was one of the lowest numbers. Plus, climate change was entirely indirect effects on diseases. We could save tens million lives through water infrastructure projects, vaccinations, and medications, or we could save a hundred thousand through CO2 reductions. The choice is obvious. If demons are roaming the land killing people, you don't have the knights converting people so that the demons won't grow as much stronger in a century's time. You send the knights out to kill the demons! It's a silly, fantastical allegory, but it drives home the point. If you want to save people, going out and saving them is the best way to do it.

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